Jesús Franco Manera, better known as Jess Franco, died on April 2 at home in Málaga, Spain. The astonishingly prolific writer/director/producer was responsible for over 180 feature films, most of them lurid, subversive, and highly energetic pulp. His films bop with the rhythms of jazz and mambo. Admired by Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and many other filmmakers, Franco chose to make movies cheaply and promiscuously, sometimes filming more than a dozen full-length features in a single year.

VENUS IN FURS is one of Franco’s best and most easily accessible films. Despite its title it is not based on the classic S&M novel. Instead, Franco drew his inspiration from legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, who described to him one of the long reveries he experienced while playing a solo. The film’s narrative is a fever dream about a mysterious woman who washes ashore nude on a beach and is discovered by a jazz trumpeter, who happened to be digging up a buried horn in the area. It’s allegorical, obtuse, and filled with sex, drugs, and violence, generally in combination. Gorgeous and full of improvised visual ideas, VENUS IN FURS is as complete an expression of Franco’s aesthetic as you’ll get.